Exposure
by Walter
Summary: Ryan gets a hobby.


Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Summary: Written for the first annual OCSFC. My story is for **HYPERFocused**, who submitted this sentence: Now that Ryan doesn't have to spend all his time punching people and taking care of his drunk mother, he's got time for a hobby. Give him one (other than rescuing/attempting to force-feed Marissa).

Author's note: I don't think this story was quite what HYPERFocused was looking for, but I'm apparently unable to write a nice, happy story. I hope it doesn't disappoint! Thanks to Maud for the very quick beta. I almost made the deadline…

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* * *

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The camera hit the floor of the garage and Ryan knew immediately it was broken, because didn't everything break when he was pissed and slamming shoulders and fists into walls. Or shelves. Whatever. The camera landed with a dull crack, just like a bone breaking, and you heard it and you knew exactly what had happened but it didn't sound quite like you expected it to sound. He crouched down and reached a hand toward the camera but pulled back before touching it.

"Shit."

He reached again and touched it this time and rolled it over and yeah, the lens was cracked and dented. Shit. His hand hovered over the camera, uncertain, until he finally picked it up and cradled it in his palms. He turned it over in his hands, inspecting all sides, before setting it back on the ground. He swung his backpack over his shoulder, pulled out the sweater he'd worn to school that morning, and wrapped the camera in the sweater before tucking it into the pack. He'd take care of it tomorrow.

* * *

It wasn't until he swung open the door into the living room and saw Seth and Summer making out on the couch that he remembered his rage, but it was just a word now, he didn't feel anything. Just that leftover shake that always struck him when he'd fucked something up and bad things were going to happen. But nothing bad was going to happen this time because he'd fix the camera, and anyway, bad things didn't happen here, in this house. Not really. Not often. He knew that but his body didn't and so he was still shaking, just a little.

"What's up?" Seth said from the couch. He wasn't kissing Summer anymore but they were still wrapped around each other, feet and hands and Summer's too-small skirt that she was already trying to tug down a little further on her thighs.

"Hey."

"Where's Coop?" Summer didn't even look at him when she spoke but he didn't mind.

"Don't know."

"Weren't you guys hanging out tonight?"

"Yeah. Your parents home?"

"She flaked again, huh?" Summer said, and she looked at him this time and she looked sad or embarrassed or something so he walked into the kitchen before she could apologize for Marissa.

"They'll be home late," Seth called from the den. Ryan grabbed a bottle of cranberry juice from the refrigerator and hovered at the edge of the kitchen. "We ordered pizza. It'll be here in a few minutes."

Ryan finished the juice in five long swallows and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. He stood there, like he was waiting, but he wasn't because he had nothing to wait for.

* * *

There was a sign in the photo shop that said they didn't do repairs, but it was the only place he'd found in the Yellow Pages that was close enough to bike to, so he walked inside anyway and set the camera on the counter. There were two clerks, one pulling out digital cameras from a display case for a well-dressed woman that Ryan might've seen at some charity fundraiser or another, and the other filing packages of developed film. Ryan cleared his throat and the filing clerk raised a hand for him to wait. Ryan tapped his foot.

"We don't do repairs," the clerk said. He was young, looked younger than Ryan, with hair and skin that seemed damp.

"I know. Do you know where I can get it fixed? Some place close by?"

"Nah." The kid picked up the camera, turning it around to look through the eyepiece. "You'd have to send it away for repairs, but this thing is how old? I doubt Canon even has the parts for it anymore. I think you're out of luck."

Shit. Of course. He'd have to just tell the Cohens now. Seth would probably tell him to put the camera back where he'd found it and pretend it never happened. He could do that. Maybe.

"Let me take a look."

The second clerk was older, maybe he even owned the place, or was a manager or something. He was broad-shouldered and bearded and Ryan stepped back a little when he came to the counter and took the camera from the kid.

"It's just the UV filter."

"What?"

"The filter, the piece that screws over the lens. That's the only part that's broken."

Ryan didn't know what that meant, but it didn't much matter, because the camera was still broken. He reached out his hands to take back the camera, but the older clerk—the manager, the owner, whatever—crouched behind the counter and took the camera with him. He came back up with a square package that he set on the counter.

"It's $24.99."

"What is?"

"A new filter. We'll just take off the old one," he twisted the end of the lens until a piece popped off, "and put on this new one. And you're all set."

And he was. The camera was fine.

"$24.99?"

"Plus tax."

Ryan stared at the camera sitting on the counter, and suddenly it looked like relief and everything good that had ever happened to him.

"Can I get a role of film too?"

* * *

Ryan didn't like photos, not really. Not even looking at them, and definitely not posing for them.

The framed photographs on the Cohen's mantel could have been any family. Hell, they could've been his family. Because what were photographs other than the same lies that everyone told all the time, lived even. Smiling and laughing and pretending. That's what people did. That's how they lived. Photographs didn't capture the moment, they captured the lie.

When Ryan was 15 he'd found a book of landscape photos—all Ansel Adams, black and white shots from Yosemite—and he'd thought finally, the truth, because there was nature and no one could fuck with nature, because it was real. But that was a lie too. He'd learned about photography, studied it a little. There were shutter speeds and focal points and depth of field and a million different ways to tease the photos in a dark room, and none of that was the truth. It was just another pretty picture someone could frame and hang on the wall and pretend that everything was just fucking great.

So he didn't smile in pictures, not usually, not unless it was important that he smile because someone needed just that much from him. He didn't want to lie, didn't like it, but sometimes he had to.

"Seth was a pretty cute kid."

Ryan looked over his shoulder at Sandy.

"Yeah."

They were all pretty cute. He'd been pretty cute. Blond hair and blue eyes and big smiles, always big smiles. That's what you were supposed to do. He'd even smiled in his sixth-grade photo, when he'd had a black eye on the day they were supposed to take school portraits. Someone had edited it out in the final print, the one he'd never taken home to his mom. The one where he was just another cute kid with a smile. He'd skipped every school picture day after that one.

"Can I ask you for a favor?" Ryan asked.

Sandy smiled, looked taken aback. "Of course."

"I, uh," he pulled his backpack off his shoulder, opened the main pocket, "found this a couple days ago."

He handed it to Sandy, who turned it over in his palms and then raised his eyebrows at him.

"I'd forgotten all about this. It was Kirsten's. You know she used to want to be a photographer? For a couple years after college I swear she took this thing everywhere. It was like an extra limb." He held it up, looked through the eyepiece. "Huh. I thought the lens was cracked."

Ryan closed his eyes. It figured.

"It was just the UV filter."

"What?"

"Never mind. I was wondering if I could maybe borrow it. Just for a few days."

"Sure," Sandy said, handing the camera back to Ryan. "But if you want to take some pictures, we should get you something a little more modern. A digital camera, so you can see the pictures right away."

"No, really, I'd rather use this one."

And it was true. Ryan already like the weight of this camera, the way he could really feel it in his hands. He liked the buttons and knobs. He liked looking through the lens and watching the world come in and out of focus. It felt real. So many things didn't feel real anymore.

"All right, suit yourself."

"Kirsten won't mind?"

Sandy laughed. "I doubt she even remembers we still have this camera. It may not even work, you know."

* * *

The camera worked fine, but Ryan quickly realized he sucked at photography. He'd studied photography, yeah, but he'd never taken a picture before. Never. No one in his family had owned a camera. No one had ever bothered.

His first role of film—pictures of Marissa, who couldn't _not_ pose like a model—came out overexposed, and the older clerk at the photo shop told him about setting the aperture and shutter speed to let in less light.

The second role was all pictures of Seth—Seth in the pool, Seth playing video games, Seth on his skateboard—but he moved too fast and the shutter speed was too slow and every photo was blurry, reminding Ryan of how he could never quite keep up with Seth. He kept those photos, stuffing them under a stack of books in his closet.

He went to Kirsten for help before starting on the third role, his last role. He wasn't the type of person to give up after just one try, or two tries, but if he couldn't figure this thing out on the third try, that was that.

"I used to love taking pictures," Kirsten said, on her knees in front of a bookcase in one of the spare rooms upstairs. "Photography is all about potential. You never know what you're going to get each time, if the shot is going to work out, if you'll capture something special. I hate digital cameras. You don't get the anticipation. You know, I refused to find out whether Seth was going to be a boy or girl before he was born."

She found the books she was looking for on the top shelf, stretching up on her toes, hands high over her head. A puff of dust followed the books and they both coughed and waved their hands in front of their faces.

"I can teach you a little, if you like."

Ryan shrugged. "I'll figure it out."

He stayed up late reading to figure out the basics. He skipped the chapters about composition and lighting and especially the last chapter on nude portraits, because it was Kirsten's book and he didn't want to think about what kinds of pictures of she'd taken of Sandy.

* * *

He caught Summer in the den, sitting alone on the couch. She was studying, her head bowed over a textbook as she twirled a strand of hair around her finger.

He caught Marissa lying on her stomach on his bed, staring out the window at nothing. Her hair was falling in her face, stringy and dry, and her eyes were vacant. He knew that Marissa liked it when her hair was in her face, because she thought it made her look mysterious, or sexy. But really it just made her look like she was trying too hard.

Seth was hard to catch, because he was still moving too fast, and because Seth was always looking around, always waiting for something new to happen, so it was hard to surprise him. But he caught Seth in his room, eyes closed, listening to music with his headphones and bobbing his head just slightly up and down. Ryan made sure the shutter speed was quick.

Kirsten yelled at him when he caught her, bent over the dishwasher unloading clean wine glasses. He'd been reading at the counter, waiting for her to forget he was there or find something to do.

Ryan saw a lot of things that no one else saw. And he knew a lot of things that no one else did. It wasn't that he was particularly smart or observant, it was just that no one else paid attention, that's why no one knew anything. They weren't selfish, or self-absorbed, whatever the difference was; they'd just never needed to look. Pay attention. Stop and watch instead of think. Ryan sometimes thought that Sandy knew what was going on, but most of the time he knew he didn't.

Ryan knew that Summer did her hair-twirling thing when she was taking a test or reading one of Seth's comic books while she waited for him to finish something on the computer. He knew that Summer was probably the smartest girl in his grade. And even Seth didn't know that.

He also knew that Marissa was still drinking, and that there wasn't shit he could do about it, and he knew that he'd still try. He knew that she needed him a hell of a lot more than she loved him.

He knew that sometimes when Seth stared at him, his eyelids dropped halfway shut and his mouth hung open until he had to lick his lips, and that was when he stopped and looked at something else. Ryan knew that Seth had a crush on him, and he knew that Summer knew all about it and Seth didn't. He also knew that Seth would never do anything about it, because, well, because it had taken him 10 years to do anything about Summer and while he spoke fast he didn't do many other things very fast. Except maybe sex, but Ryan would never know anything about that.

He knew that Kirsten was still pretty scared of him, or scared for him, which was all the same thing. When they were alone together she found little chores to do, little activities to keep her hands busy, even if it was just straightening her collar or tugging at her wedding ring or unloading the dishwasher.

Ryan caught Sandy early on a Wednesday morning, surfboard tucked under an arm, wet hair slicked back, off of his forehead. He thought that Sandy saw each day the same way Kirsten saw photographs. He saw potential. He saw anticipation. He always smiled in the morning. Even when he had no good reason to smile.

Ryan saw it, but he didn't get it at all.

* * *

"Come on, man, there aren't any pictures of you."

"I'm the photographer. There aren't supposed to be pictures of me."

"Just one."

"No."

"C'mon."

"No."

"Give it to me."

"Seth."

He was afraid they were going to break the camera with all of the pulling back and forth, so Ryan let Seth have his way. Seth raised it and started to focus on Ryan, then without any warning spun around, swung one arm over Ryan's shoulders and held the other arm out in front, the camera facing them both. Ryan yelled. The shutter clicked. Open. Closed.

"You just wasted my last picture."

* * *

Ryan thought he was the only one home when he pulled out his developed film and started flipping through the photographs over a bowl of cereal after school. But then Seth came in, followed by Summer, followed by Marissa, and when the three of them had Ryan's photos spread over the kitchen table, Sandy and Kirsten came home.

Summer shrieked. "Oh my God. Do I really have wrinkle lines around my mouth? Is my hair always that greasy? Why didn't anyone tell me that sweater makes my neck look fat?"

"Wow, I look like a ginormous dork with my eyes closed. Remind me to never close my eyes again."

"You made my ass look big. Ryan, how could you do that to me?"

"Your ass? Look at mine. At least you're not bent over a dishwasher."

"Huh. My eyebrows really are out of control."

Ryan snatched the photos and piled them into a clumsy stack that he stuffed in his backpack. They were still yelling at him when he shut the backdoor and headed toward the pool house.

* * *

When he got out of the shower the next morning he caught Seth rifling through his backpack.

"I just wanted that picture of Summer," he said. "I've never seen her look so serious."

In the kitchen, Kirsten asked him for the picture of Sandy. On the way to school, Sandy said he wanted to frame the picture of Kirsten and put it on his desk at work.

"So I can stare at that ass all day."

Ryan didn't want to hear it, but agreed to give him the picture anyway.

Summer approached him at lunch, hand outstretched.

"You're a shitty photographer, Chino, but I don't have any pictures of Cohen, so give it up."

Ryan had been planning to keep that one for himself, but he shrugged and offered to bring it to school the next day. Marissa asked for the picture of herself. "I don't want anyone else to see it," she said softly. Hurt.

* * *

It was two weeks before Ryan noticed the new picture on the mantle. He'd finished Kirsten's books by then, including the chapter on nude portraits. He was trying to decide if he should ask Seth or Marissa to pose for him first.

He was walking out of the kitchen, on his way to Marissa's house, and the new picture was right in the middle of the mantle. He usually noticed these things, these little things. It was a little annoying that he hadn't noticed this time.

It was Ryan and Seth, soft and blurry because the camera was held just a little too close to their faces. Ryan was turned toward Seth, mouth open, shouting something, probably shouting at him to stop fucking around with the camera. Seth was beaming, eyes wide, mouth open, staring right at the camera.

"That one's my new favorite."

Ryan smiled and glanced behind him at Kirsten. She stepped beside him and pulled the framed picture off the mantle.

"You look like brothers here, you know that? Something in the chin, or the mouth. It's hard to see, but it's there."

Ryan saw two kids who couldn't look less alike. He saw a picture that was out of focus, and he saw blue eyes and blond hair and brown hair and brown eyes. He saw a big smile and a scowl.

"Sometimes, not very often but every now and then, I catch you two standing together and you look so much alike," she said. "You'll tilt your head a certain way, or Seth will pause for just a minute and do some kind of sideways glance. And you're brothers. And then just as fast, it's gone."

She smiled at the picture and ran a finger around the edge of the frame.

"But look, you caught it. That moment."

"Actually, Seth took that picture."

Kirsten laughed, and set the photo back on the mantle.

"Apparently Seth needs a camera with auto-focus."

Ryan picked up the photo after Kirsten had walked away, and he tried to see what she'd seen. Tried to spot the details, the head-tilt or the sideways glance. It was like looking at the stars, the way the constellations came into focus when you didn't stare right at them. When his gaze drifted to the side, he thought he knew what Kristen was talking about. He thought maybe he did. But then it was gone.

It wasn't the truth, because they weren't brothers. But it wasn't a lie either, because this picture was real. And he decided it didn't matter. It was just a picture. It just was.

-end


End file.
